Amazon Studios has officially announced the title of its forthcoming Lord of the Rings television series, which is now known as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The Lord of the Rings series will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2022.
First announced back in 2917, the highly-anticipated prequel to the long-running epic fantasy series will finally arrive later this year. Set during uring the Second Age of Middle-Earth’s history, a period of time primarily chronicled in appendices to the J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novel series, the Amazon Lord of the Rings series will take place thousands of years before the events depicted in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies, and serves to set up both.
“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics. The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring – but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all”, showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay explained in a statement.
In the trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings series, various shots of Middle-earth are seen as molten metal is poured into a forge and cooled, depicting the process of creation for the series’ title in silver with lettering in Elven script. Over this, a female voiceover recites the iconic Tolkien’s epigraph to the Lord of the Rings universe, which reads as follows:
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Although it omits the passage “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
The current cast for the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power so far includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman, and Sara Zwangobani.
And in addition to the showrunners Payne and McKay, the Lord of the Rings series will be executive produced by Lindsey Weber, Callum Greene, J.A. Bayona, Belén Atienza, Justin Doble, Jason Cahill, Gennifer Hutchison, Bruce Richmond, and Sharon Tal Yguado, and producer Christopher Newman, with Wayne Che Yip serving as co-executive producer and directing episodes alongside J.A. Bayona and Charlotte Brändström.
